Ellis Startled the Witch
by JazzyRedBird
Summary: Ellis was accidentally left behind and a witch found him. Nick decided to save him, but can't remember which was to go to get to the safe house. Rated T for language.
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: sadly, I do not own any of these characters, no matter how much I would like to.

**I apologize for anything you think is OOC**…. I tried my best, but sometimes my best just isn't good enough. :)

...

"Everyone get in the safe room!" Rochelle's voice echoed and suddenly, the sobbing stopped.

The door slammed shut against a flood of infected bodies, but there was only three survivors inside. "Shit." Nick muttered, glancing out the door. Sure enough, there was Ellis, running as fast as his legs could carry him away from a witch, her claws outstretched and bloodied.

"Come on guys!" Ellis was yelling as he attempted to reload his gun. He tripped over his own foot and crashed to the ground, rolling a few feet before skidding to a halt. His pants were torn and bloodied before the witch even got to him.

"Shit, Nick he's not worth it!" Rochelle grabbed Nick's arm and tried to pull him back as Nick snatched a few extra guns from the shelf and kicked the door open again. "Come on, just forget it. Don't risk your own life for the kid."

Nick decided to not grace that comment with a response and merely yanked his arm away from her to set off at a run towards the screaming witch. Blood was flying in all directions and Ellis' gun was lying a few feet out of reach. The first shot hit the witch's head, making her stop mauling Ellis for a second before the rest of Nick's bullets shot through her body, leaving her shredded and completely dead.

"Aw, hell." Ellis moaned as he tried to push himself up and slipped in a pool of his own blood.

"Understatement of the year, Ellis." Nick grumbled as he knelt beside the kid and grabbed the health pack on his pack. "I was saving this for myself, but…" He opened it up and pulled the bandages out. Ellis twitched away slightly when Nick's hands touched the deep wounds left by the witch's claws, but sighed appreciatively when Nick rubbed the disinfectant on the cuts and covered them with the bandages.

"Shit!" Ellis grabbed one of Nick's guns and yanked it out of the holster on Nick's hip. He aimed at something above Nick's shoulder and shot several times. Nick felt the heat of the bullet as it whizzed by his face and turned to see several dead infected collapsing to the ground. "There's more coming. We gotta get inside." Ellis drawled, attempting once again to get up, but only managing to slip on his own blood.

Nick stood up and offered a hand, which Ellis gratefully took and rose with only a few slips on the way. Once Nick let go of Ellis, the younger man tried to take a step and, again, forgot his blood was slippery and almost fell flat on his ass. "Shit, Ellis, can't you even walk?" Nick asked, but he didn't sound angry as he swiftly stretched out an arm and caught Ellis by the back of his shirt. He tossed the younger man's arm over his own shoulders and shifted his grip on the gun so he could comfortably hold it with one hand.

There was a bubbling sort of growl and Nick pulled Ellis back just in time; a steaming pile of boomer bile splattered onto the pavement in front of their feet. Although the creature had failed to hit the targets directly, the survivors' feet and lower legs were splashed with the vile-smelling liquid. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit." Ellis muttered, tightening his grip on the katana he was holding and taking a few steps away from Nick. Hurried footsteps came from every direction as wave after wave of infected came rushing out of their hiding places to swarm the puke on the ground. Nick took aim and shot the offending boomer once in the stomach, causing it to explode and blow a few infected away into an alley just as the first fell on them. Ellis beheaded it with a sing that almost knocked him off balance.

"Just stay on your feet, Ellis." Nick growled, turning to annihilate as many infected as he could before reloading. Ellis's eyes flew in every direction as he slashed at the bodies surrounding them. The piles of dead infected kept growing around them until, finally, the stench of the boomer bile disappeared and they were allowed to lean against each other in relief. Ellis groaned as he took his weight off of his left leg, which was sticking out at a strange angle from the fall, and Nick decided that now would be a good time to make a run for it. He hurried Ellis along as best he could toward where he thought the safe room was. As it turned out, he had gotten confused during the hoard attack and had run the wrong direction.

"There's got to be another safe room around here, right? There's always more." Ellis was trying to sound hopeful, but his eyes saw nothing but dead bodies and burned buildings surrounding them.

Nick turned around and scanned for any evidence of the safe room Rochelle and Coach were waiting in, but couldn't see a single making that pointed him in the right direction. "Best to keep going in one direction, so we don't go in circles." He said quietly, leaning Ellis against a building. "Let me finish patching you up." He added, pulling the rest of the bandages from the pack and wrapping them tightly around Ellis' busted up leg. "Sorry." He mumbled when Ellis cried out in pain from Nick popping the bone back into place. "I think you should be able to walk on that."

Ellis tested his weight on his leg and laughed when he hardly felt any pain. "That's better! Hey, this reminds me of this one time my buddy keith and I went joy riding in his truck and I got thrown out the back, man his mom was so mad at us, but I landed on my leg and it got busted real bad. He had to take me to the hospital and I needed surgery to set it right again. Man, I'm glad I don't need doctors now."

Nick rolled his eyes. "The nearest one might try to gut you, Ellis so let's try to avoid those kinds of injuries again."

Ellis nodded and grinned, bouncing off the wall and switching his katana to his other hand. "Let's find that safe house." He jogged ahead, but Nick caught up to him and grabbed the back of his shirt tightly in one hand as a warning to not run off alone like usual. "No taking risks, 'cause we haven't got any more med kits." Ellis attempted to impersonate Nick's voice and failed miserably, somehow succeeding in making the other man smile a fraction before turning serious again.

"Seriously, Ellis, if we get injured out here now, we're dead."

"Or infected."

"Either way, we're dead."

They walked in silence for a while before Ellis decided to voice a question he had been worrying about for a while. "What happens if we can't find a safe house?"

Nick, who was currently walking in front of Ellis, shrugged but didn't say anything. The response did nothing to boost Ellis' confidence in their search. Total darkness had fallen sometime during their walk and they were now searching the streets with their feeble flashlights for a sign pointing them to a safe house. Ellis was the one that finally spotted the tell tale arrow pointing down a side street that finally gave them new hope for their lives. As they had been forced to fight swarms of the infected, both men were now limping and carrying only melee weapons, having run out of ammunition several hours previously.

"Safe room up ahead!" Ellis yelled gleefully, pointing to the orange arrow on a wall about an hour after the sun had started to rise again. "Ammunition, health packs, guns, and beds!" He laughed and picked up his pace, causing the older man to shake his head and hurry to catch up.

"You need to keep your voice down, Ellis. The safe house could still be several miles away."

"Naw, Nick! It's right there!" Ellis broke into a run. "See?" He grabbed the handle of the door and pulled. "Shit!" Nick heard his slashing with his katana and a screeching wail coming from the room. "Witch!"

Nick ran full out for the room, raising his ax in his hands. The witch was trying to get past the katana to maul Ellis, but the kid was keeping her back, if not injuring her very much. When Nick got there, the combined effort of the two melee weapons finally did the witch in and she crumpled to the ground in a bloody mess. "Some safe house." Nick growled, kicking the body out of the way and pushing Ellis into the room first. "Where are we anyway?"

"Some sort of motel, I think. The sign was broken and I was too busy killing that bitch to really care where I was." Ellis laughed. "Got that door blocked? Cool, let;s look around."

"Ellis, this isn't some sort of vacation!" Nick was tired, hungry, and seriously lacking on patience. He had heard enough of Ellis' stories about him and his buddy Keith to last him a lifetime. If any of it was true, Nick would eat Ellis' hat. He figured that Ellis just didn't realize how serious the situation was and had decided to treat it like some sort of game that he had to win. "We are separated from Rochelle and Coach, have no way of contacting them, and can't tell whether we've just gone backwards or forwards to figure out where we need to go in order to get the hell out of here! Maybe paying attention to a few details wouldn't kill you!" He stormed off into a room and slammed the door shut. There were sleeping bags all over the floor and writing on the walls, but Nick ignored all of it and fell onto the bed. He was asleep before he even shut his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

Nick woke up to gunshots coming from the other room and bolted out of bed. He half stumbled out the door and to the main room, where he saw Ellis holding a sniper and pointing it out the bars on the door. "Shit, Ellis!"

Ellis looked over and shrugged. "I figured we weren't going to be using the sniper since we need to use close range guns, and I really wanted to shoot some of them." _Bang. Bang._

Deciding not to lecture Ellis, Nick walked around the main room in search for some food. "Any idea where some food might be?" He looked down a hall and saw it blocked off completely. The same was true for every hallway leading off from the main room.

"Already looked." _Bang. Bang. Bang._ "There's some chips under the counter, but not much else. I think they tried to cut off the rest of the motel when the infection hit. There's only one room left." _Bang._

Nick suddenly felt guilty as he looked at the younger man. "Did you get any sleep?"

"Sure. Used one of the sleeping bags." _Bang. Bang. Click._ "Out of ammo. Any more sniper rounds over there? I think I might have used it all."

Nick shuffled through the piles of ammunition on the table. "None left. How long have you been shooting them?"

"Coupla hours, I think. Figured if you didn't wake up when I started, you probably wouldn't wake up at all." He examined the sniper in his hands and started to pull it apart. It looked like he just wanted something to do with his hands. "Think Coach and Rochelle are going to wait in that other safe house forever?"

Nick considered the back of Ellis' head and frowned. He hadn't put too much thought into the other two survivors before now. "I expect they'll assume we got overrun by infected and keep going to find a way out. It's what I would do."

"Think we went the right way?"

Nick didn't respond for a while, having no idea what to say. He himself had marked them off for dead when they had set out on their search, and was now convinced they had gone the complete opposite direction; there had been just too many dead bodies on the way for them to have been going forward. "I don't know, Ellis. Maybe."

The remaining pieces of the sniper rifle fell from Ellis' hands as the mechanic slumped in his chair. "That means you think we went the wrong way, doesn't it?"

Nick placed a hand on Ellis' shoulder. "Sorry." He said, not knowing what else to do. It was his fault, really. They should have just searched the area until they found Rochelle and Coach. Now they were stranded and had no way of knowing which way was their best bet for safety. "Hey, i saw some clothes in the other room if you want to get out of that. That witch tore you up pretty bad."

Ellis looked down at his shredded and bloody clothes and shrugged. "I'd rather die in my own clothes than someone else's. Especially since they probably got infected."

With nothing else to say, Nick walked away and examined every inch of their safe house. Ellis had been right; the room Nick had slept in was the only room with a bed remaining, but the place had originally been an old motel. He found more bags of food and tossed them into a pile in the middle of the main room for later. He found doors that led to brick walls. He found children's toys. He found bloodied and ripped clothing. He found more sleeping bags. Then, finally, he found some suits. After selecting one that was approximately his size, Nick changed out of his disgusting, blood-soaked suit and into a newer white one. Hoping to brighten Ellis' mood, Nick grabbed a pair of overalls and a shirt and walked back to the seat in the middle of the room. Ellis was now trying to reassemble the sniper rifle.

"Hey, overalls! I found you clean clothes." He tossed the garments at Ellis and smirked when Ellis started laughing.

"Well, hell, Nick. How'd you find my size?" Ellis lifted the overalls up and held them in front of himself, showing that they had probably belonged to a much smaller man before the infection.

Ellis spent the rest of the day in his usual too-happy state that Nick had found irritating on the walk over, but was grateful for now because it offered him a reason to stop thinking about their imminent doom. "Nick, quit looking so doom and gloom. It's not like the end of the world or anything."

Nick actually laughed and shook his head to try to clear his thoughts of the whole 'infected are going to eat my brains' problem. "I suppose we could make a run for that store across the street and see if there's any food left there."

Ellis sat up straighter. "Can I shoot them while you get the food?"

Nick laughed out loud at the excitement on Ellis' face; the kid really loved shooting these infected guys too much sometimes. "I'm bringing a few guns too, just in case."

Ellis jumped up and started sorting through guns until he had found two that he approved of while Nick grabbed a few bags that didn't have too many holes in them. Looking over at Nick, Ellis started laughing at the other man trying to situate the bags so that they weren't in the way. "You know, this reminds me of this one time my buddy Keith and I-"

Nick glared and Ellis shut up, pretending to be occupied with checking his gun's ammunition. "This store better be worth it." Ellis cheerfully unlatched the door and swung it open, shooting blindly into the alley for a second to be sure that their immediate path was clear. "If there's a witch out there, we're dead."

"That's why we wait to see, Nicholas." Ellis berated him. "If there's one of those whining witches, we shut the door and lock her out." No witch came down the alley, so Ellis decided it was time to raid the store. He slammed the door shut behind them and hurried to beat Nick to the end of the alley. The store was just across the street, but Ellis could see a smoker and a hunter inside and a spitter walking along the street right outside the store. "Just shoot them all? Or wait and see if we can sneak past?" It was one of those rare moments where Ellis actually spoke quietly.

"Shoot them, I think." Nick responded, tightening his grip on his own gun just in case. Just then, the spitter turned and saw them hiding in the alley and launched her acid spit at them.

"Spitter goo!" Ellis screamed, shooting the spitter and running away from the green acid eating through the trash can he had been sitting on. Nick followed him quickly outside and they shot their way into the store. Once in there, they couldn't see a single infected, not even the two special infected they had spotted before. Nick darted around the store, snatching anything and everything edible and stuffing it into the bags until he was carrying four full grocery bags. "Hurry it up, Nick! I hear a witch coming this way."

"Done!" Nick ran out past Ellis and they raced each other to the safe house. They crashed through the door and Ellis dropped the latch into place with a joyful whoop. He collapsed into his chair laughing hysterically. "What's so funny, overalls?" Nick said.

"We just went grocery shopping in the middle of the zombie apocalypse!" Ellis finally controlled his hysterical laughter long enough to say that one sentence and then collapsed into another fit of the giggles. Nick couldn't help it; he started chuckling at the absurdity of the situation too. For a long time, neither of them could stop laughing once they had both started.

When the two finally regained control of themselves, they were both clutching at stitches in their sides. "Hey, Ellis, help me find a place to put all of this crap." Nick was attempting to sort through the food that they had gotten, so Ellis sat beside him and helped pile the different foods around them. They sat beside each other on the floor for hours, just sorting through their food and debating whether or not they would survive long enough to figure out how to signal a rescue from here. Ellis decided that it was possible and Nick, being unable to crush the joy out of Ellis' face had said he agreed, although he really didn't see how it could be possible.

The lightbulb above them flickered and they both looked up, having completely lost track of time. "I call the bed tonight!" Ellis yelled, jumping up and sprinting into the room. Nick heard the bedsprings squeak as Ellis catapulted onto the mattress and shook his head at the kid's ridiculous happiness.


	3. Chapter 3

Ellis' snores filled the small room and Nick rolled over onto his left side, pulling an extra pillow over his ear. Nick had waited an hour or so before deciding to go to bed after Ellis had already fallen asleep, which turned out to have been a terrible idea. Thankfully, it had started raining pretty hard and the constant pounding on the rooftop slightly deadened Ellis' snoring. Nick could hear the low rumbling of thunder in the distance as he started drifting gratefully off to sleep.

_BOOM!_

"_TANK!"_ Ellis' scream preceded a heavy object falling directly on top of Nick. Nick sat straight up and hit his head on something painfully solid. "Ow!" Ellis yelled at the same time as him. Another clap of thunder rolled directly above the little safe house and Nick heard Ellis mutter an embarrassed "oh".

"Shit, Ellis. What the hell?" Nick growled as he sat up again, this time slowly so as to not hit his head on Ellis again. He rested his back against the wall and squinted into the darkness to see Ellis' face only a few inches away from his own.

"I thought…" Ellis ran his fingers through his hair. "I thought it was a tank." He sighed and slumped. "Shit, that's embarrassing." Hanging his head in embarrassment and relief, Ellis finally realized what exactly he had landed on when his forehead hit Nick's head. They were so close that Nick saw Ellis' eyes widen in surprise in the instant before he leaped off Nick's knees and scrambled for the bed again. "Um…" He coughed. "Sorry. About… that" Seemingly out of words for once, Ellis turned over and pretended to fall asleep again.

Nick could hear Ellis' forced slow breathing and had to force himself not to laugh. The kid's sudden embarrassment gave Nick an idea. Well, if he was really honest with himself, he had been thinking about it for a while, but this incident inspired a way of acting on the idea. As silently as he could, Nick got out of the sleeping bag and stood up. He waited until there was a flash of lightning and then listened for the beginning of the thunder. When it started to roll directly above them, Nick jumped on the bed.

"Ahh!" Ellis shot straight up again, hands flying in every direction. He smacked Nick in the face a few times before noticing that the older man was cracking up. "What the hell?" Ellis fell back onto his pillows again. "I never figured you to be the jokester in a serious situation." Ellis muttered darkly.

Nick was choking on his laughter now. "I never figured you to be scared of thunderstorms, Ellis!" Nick laughed. "We're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, man, you should have gotten over that fear a while ago."

Ellis glared. "I toldja, I thought it was a tank breaking in!" He shoved at Nick, who lost his balance and fell onto his side on the bed.

Nick shoved Ellis again. "Learn how to take a joke, overalls." He teased, sitting up and grinning at his disgruntled friend.

Ellis glared at Nick, who continued to grin teasingly, and then attacked. He leaped forward and sent them both flying off the bed and onto the piles of sleeping bags on the floor. Nick slammed into the ground with a surprised grunt. "I know how to take a joke, old man." Ellis growled.

Without meaning to, Nick burst out laughing again. He couldn't help it; Ellis was just taking everything too damn seriously. Ellis lowered his face and seemed ready to make another go at insulting Nick when the conman decided to test out his theory. He picked his head up and covered Ellis' mouth with his own. Ellis didn't jerk away, but he also didn't encourage Nick to continue. Nick grabbed Ellis by the neck and yanked him downwards. Ellis still didn't encourage Nick, but was still not telling him off.

"Come on, overalls." Nick snarled into Ellis' mouth. For one second longer, Ellis remained still as a statue, then he seemed to regain movement as he forced his mouth down onto Nick's, causing the back of Nick's head to slam into the floor again. He sat up after a moment, still straddling Nick's waist and seemed to be trying to find words to ask a question that Nick could sense coming. Instead of letting him think about it, Nick sat up too and forced Ellis to back up far enough for Nick to place his hands on the other man's chest and push him to the floor instead. Before allowing time for Ellis to change his mind, Nick started to attack Ellis' mouth again while working on getting their shirts off.

"Let me help with that…" Ellis slurred, grabbing hold of Nick's shirt and yanking it so hard off of him that a large rip appeared in the back of it. Filled with triumph, Nick threw the shirt into a corner to be forgotten for the remainder of the night.

…

Yeahhh, so that's my first attempt at writing a fanfiction. Hope you didn't hate it :) reviews are always appreciated!


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